Test Setup

Test Setup

Walking into the testing process, it is important to have a neutral mindset. Whether you are a bass-head or a treble-freak (generally speaking, but you get the idea), speakers should be judged for their ability to reproduce a natural tone as true to the original audio content was meant to be heard. For this reason we always try to leave our own personal musical preferences outside our lab before we begin testing. It is also important to have a wide variety of testing material so as to accurately gauge the performance of the speakers across the whole gamut of frequency.

While we tried a variety of audio and video materials, for the purpose of conveying test results across a similar class of products, we detail our test comparison materials selected and the general test setup. Our standard MP3 tracks loaded onto a USB drive was the first salvo of materials fired at the Pioneer system. We also paired the Samsung HT-E8200 with a TV so as to make full use of the Blu-ray player's capabilities. This meant we could include Michael Jackson's This Is It as part of our listening sessions to see how well the Pioneer could reproduce some of the King of Pop's classic hits.

In order to check if the Samsung HT-E8200 was accomplished at handling movie soundtracks, we tried it out with Superman Returns, paying special attention to how well sound effects, dialogue and musical score were rendered.